The Age of Subtlety
Patiño Loira, Javier The Age of Subtlety is the first book-length study to examine the seventeenth-century craze for rhetorical conceits in connection with scientific and technological debates. Focusing on Italy and Spain, it argues that these intricate and challenging metaphors became embodiments of a competition between natural and human ingenuity, as well as sites to reflect on the consequences of telescopic and microscopic vision, the boundaries between natura...